Planes are ridiculously crowded these days, and a pilot explains why
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Passenger flights are becoming more crowded each year.
Nearly 849,000,000 people flew on U.S. carrier airplanes in 2017, a 13 percent increase since 2005, according to U.S. Bureau of Transportation statistics. At the same time, there were nearly 1.6 million fewer flights last year compared to 2005 — a 13 percent decrease.
Bob Seidel, CEO of Alerion Aviation and an experienced pilot, attributes this to a shortage of pilots.
While scheduled routes stay the same, he said, the frequency of an airline flying those routes each day have decreased to ensure that they can be flown with appropriate crewing. And the passenger load factor — the average percentage of airplane seats occupied across all flights — has increased to about 85 percent.
“Airlines operate on load factor to ensure that the routes they fly and the frequency is not below breakeven,” Seidel told Yahoo Finance. “They calculate this by measuring revenue passenger miles and use available seat miles to determine an acceptable average load factor.”
In the 21st century, the acceptable percentage of seats filled on U.S. carrier flights has risen by about 15 percent.
‘A terrible, crowded, delayed, hot, smelly experience’
More people with fewer seats means that planes are becoming increasingly crowded: The average plane contains 91 passengers, a 32 percent jump from a decade ago, according to Forbes.
“There was a time when not every plane was a hundred percent full,” Yahoo Finance’s Myles Udland said on The Final Round (video above). He added that “as someone who did not fly as a child and only really began flying when I hit late high school, college age, I’ve only ever known flying as a terrible, crowded, delayed, hot, smelly experience.”
To make it worse, airline carriers are reducing “pitch,” which is the distance from one seat to the one in front of it in order to fit in extra rows. Forbes reports that “pitch” has shrunk in coach sections from 34 inches to around 31 inches, or sometimes even less. This allows airlines to fit more seats.
Most passengers won’t be financially affected, as competitive airline pricing and newer, more efficient aircraft make flying easier. Seidel noted that there is only a reduction in the frequency of routes, which means that passengers just need to adjust their schedules or spend extra nights on the road.
“There won’t be much of an effect for the common routes, such as New York City to Miami, because those are serviced by multiple airlines that give the customer scheduling flexibility,” Seidel said. “It’s going to affect customers that fly to ‘non-hub,’ or rural destinations, more.”